Entries Tagged 'day of the triffids' ↓

Comets, or rather, previously unobserved celestial phenomena, ascribed as comets for want of a better word, have the capacity to blind. Accounts of strange green lights in the night sky, send seasoned Armageddon-dodgers to cellars, bunkers, or darkened rooms.

2. Reject Philanthropy

Rose-tinted glasses should be discarded forthwith. A Pan-continental loss of vision, will render the tiny minority of sighted near-useless in their attempts to preserve the lives of all but a handful of the blinded billions. Concentrate on succouring close friends and family, as well as the attractive. Remember the two-eyed man/woman is king/queen.

3. Never Underestimate the Enemy

Even a ‘docked’ triffid can be lethal, since they are communicative beings, that will invariably hale their toxic brethren. Additionally, the slashing sting of these hunters is by no means indiscriminate. The green meat-eaters have an uncanny knack for aiming their stings at the face. Triffids are bred to blind.

4. Stockpile

Equip yourself with three things:

Supplies - Triffids are expert in the art of siege warfare; prepare yourself for a long stand off.

Triffid Guns - ‘Spring-operated guns of various types. Most of them shoot spinning discs, crosses, or small boomerangs of thin steel. As a rule they are inaccurate above about twelve yards, though capable of slicing a triffid stem neatly at twenty-five if they hit it’.–Narration of Bill Masen, chapter two, The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham.

Flame Throwers - ‘Very effective (against triffids). The one thing we’ve used them for’.–Stephen Brennell, chapter twelve, The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham.

5. Avoid London

If you thought pre-apocalyptic London was an unfriendly place, envisage millions of recently-blinded, and hungry Cockneys squabbling over a few jars of jellied-eels. Even if you’re not forced to become the ‘eyes’ of an Eastend Gang, things will soon turn squalid, and decidedly ‘bang out of order’.

6. Forget the Yanks

Stephen Brennell’s unnamed girlfriend, and a host of other incidental characters are convinced that the Statesiders are striding to the rescue. In fact due to their often substantial bulk, and resulting slowness, not to mention cacophonous dialect, US citizens are rendered highly susceptible to the wiles of sound-sensitive, carnivorous hybrids. Remember the Triffid is a Soviet invention. As Wilfred Coker implores ‘Try to imagine a world where there are no Americans.”

First seen in Robert Wyndham’s classic The Day of the Triffids, these tall green meanies like to wait for humans to all go blind (remember what your mother said about going blind) and then smack them with their vicious triffid stingers.

Alright, people, let’s run down the facts.

Triffids:

1) are plants. Therefore zombies probably wouldn’t want to eat them. This gives triffids a decisive advantage.
2) like to eat rotting flesh, which zombies have in abundance.
3) were probably genetically engineered by Russians. This doesn’t affect their performance against Zombies at all, but I just wanted to mention it.
4) would never be able to remove the head or destroy the brain. Big strike against triffids there.

Now, as we all know, Zombies:

1) don’t eat plants (just like the zombiephile). See #1 above.
2) don’t mind being eaten by plants, and probably wouldn’t notice if they were being eaten by them.
3) can’t infect triffids with zombieness. OR CAN THEY???

However you vote, I think there’s one thing we can all agree on - in a faceoff between zombies and triffids, humans will most certainly lose.

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For those unfamiliar with the visionary British ‘Logical Fantasy’ author John Wyndham, triffids are genetically-engineered mobile, carnivorous plants. Standing at least seven foot (over two metres) tall, and clumsily propelled by three leg-like roots, triffids share with more prosaic vegetables the ability to grow through exposure to sunlight and rainwater, and collecting nutrients from soil. However, triffids also have the ability to lash out at animals (including humans) with a long whorl, lacerating the victim, whilst delivering a poisonous dose strong enough to kill a grown man. These biological wonders then slowly digest parts of the rotting carcass.

In The Day of the Triffids, the Soviet created flesh-eating hybrids, are received in the West like a Trojan Horse. Despite the lethal nature of triffids, their cultivation is encouraged on an industrial scale, since triffid-oil has health-giving properties, as well as many profitable applications. When almost everybody on Earth is rendered sightless after viewing mysterious, and hypnotic green ‘comets’, blind panic ensues, and the triffids seize their day.

The Day of the Triffids is thoughtful, compelling, and written in a style that compliments Wyndham’s rich imagination. Only the contemporary dialogue gives an indication that the story was penned six decades ago. Zombie aficionados may perceive parallels between triffids and the undead. Zombies and triffids share in common a graceless style of movement, a taste for human flesh, and a tendency to gather in large numbers. Both creatures show little regard for their individual safety, and killing one will not deter others. As with zombies, triffids can sustain a great deal of physical damage. One must also consider the differences; triffids display collective intelligence, are a communicative species, and though extremely attuned to sound, can not see.

Another aspect of Wyndham’s classic, that will resonate with zombiephiles is the presence of countless hungry souls completely unaccustomed to blindness. They make easy targets for hunting triffids, but also themselves resemble cumbersome zombies. When the lead characters are trapped in a motionless car, the pawing mob of blinded people descend on the vehicle with zombie-like menace.

As for the oft-debated question ‘Zombies versus Triffids?’ I would come down on the triffid side of the fence. In many respects zombies are a triffid’s natural prey, since Zombies are beasts rarely given to stealth. Furthermore, triffids feed on decomposing meat, which is essentially what zombies are. The poison is designed to kill humans, which are roughly the same size as zombies. They also possess greater powers of reasoning than their partially-alive opponents. Nevertheless, triffids do have an Achilles heel, namely their dread of fire. One flaming zombie would force a hundred triffids into febrile retreat.